At 5:41 p.m., Holly texted me, Leftover kale salad from dinner, already dressed, you want?
A follow-up text: Also one corn dog but assume you pass on that 😋
I’ll take both, I texted back.
Awesome, now? she texted.
I replied with 👍👍, rose from my desk, walked from the back of my apartment to the front—I was renting the first floor of a house on the east side of Madison—and stepped outside. By the time I reached the bottom step of the porch, Holly was waiting for me, holding a pale-blue dinner plate with a corn dog and a matching kale-filled bowl. She passed them to me by extending her right arm as far as possible, and I accepted by doing the same. Was this necessary, 17 months into the pandemic, outside, with both of us vaccinated? Probably not, but it was all so confusing; it was August 2021, and there’d just been breakthrough cases on the East Coast that revealed you could be vaccinated and still get it. As a pediatric ER doctor, Holly had been the first person I knew to receive the vaccine.
“Do you need ketchup?” she asked.
“I have some. Did anyone projectile vomit on you today?”
“I had a 12-year-old with a fishhook in his cheek. How’s your TV show?” This was how she referred to the pilot I was writing, even though I’d explained the differences between a spec script and a series people watched.
“It’s getting more brilliant by the minute,” I said. “I’m trying to decide where I’ll put the Emmy.”
She grinned. “I vote for the mantel.”
I nodded toward the plate. “Is the corn dog homemade?”
“God, no. It’s defrosted and not even by me—by Ted.”
“I feel like this is a perfectly balanced meal.”
“Morally or nutritionally?”
“Yes,” I said. “Exactly.”
“By the way—” Holly lowered her voice to a whisper, though she was speaking emphatically. “I weighed myself this morning, and I’ve crossed the Rubicon! You know what I mean? All the numbers in the odometer have turned over. I didn’t even cross the Rubicon when I was pregnant.”
I shook my head. “Sorry, but I’m not impressed. I’ve weighed a lot more than I do now.”
Her expression was skeptical. “How much more?”
“Forty pounds? Now I have a fake job that allows me to spend three hours a day walking around and listening to podcasts instead of saving kids’ lives. But I promise I’m not exaggerating.”
“Over the weekend, I put on a pair of shorts, and it wasn’t just that they didn’t button. They didn’t zip! I’m like, How did this happen? And then it’s like, hmm—” Holly pointed toward the plate. “Could it possibly be the corn dogs? Could that be contributing to the problem?”
“I don’t think we need to villainize corn dogs,” I said. “Corn dogs are people too.”
She laughed. “I thought you were going to tell me, ‘Everything in moderation.’”
“Well, sure,” I said. “Also that.”
She’d resumed speaking at a normal volume, but once more, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I ate three tonight!”
“I think that just means something inside you needed three corn dogs.”
“I told Jake I’d watch his new magic trick in a minute, but want to walk Comet with me around eight?”
“I’d love to,” I said.
Inside, I set Holly’s plate and bowl on my kitchen table, took several pictures of them from different angles, washed my hands, pulled a can of beer from the refrigerator, and sat at the kitchen table eating—first the corn dog, then the salad. The outside of the corn dog was sweeter than I’d expected, and I was pretty sure the dressing on the kale was homemade. It was so good that I’d have asked for the recipe if I was the kind of person who made my own salad dressing. While I ate, I played a word game on my phone. Then I washed the plate and bowl and left them in the drying rack. I returned to my desk, which was on the sunporch at the rear of the apartment, and instead of going back to the script I’d been working on when Holly had texted me, I opened my email. I typed the names of my agent, my agent’s assistant, Chandler Quinn’s agent, her agent’s assistant, and her manager, and wrote the message I’d been composing in my head for almost as long as I’d been working for Chandler Quinn. I already knew that my agent, whom I liked even though she didn’t conceal that I was a low-priority client, would be annoyed by the lack of advance notice.
Hi all, just want to let you know that I’ve made the decision to move on from my role as Chandler’s social media manager. The term I used in conversation, when I was violating the NDA I’d signed—I did this both sparingly and at regular intervals—was ghostwriter, but manager was the word in my contract. I believe that this means I need to provide four additional weeks’ worth of content after today (taking us through 9/12/21), but let me know if there’s anything else to discuss. I knew I should add a positive, even grateful, sentiment, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I sat there for more than a minute, looking at the yard behind the house—a squirrel without a tail, one I’d seen so many times before that I thought of him as a kind of rodent co-worker, was running along the top of the wooden fence—and finally I added, I hope you’re all hanging in there.
I’d left Los Angeles on March 17, 2020, after reading multiple articles about a point that would arrive in L.A. when a person could call an ambulance and wait in vain for it to show up. In fact, that point did come, but not until late December. Back in March, as I loaded my car, the last thing I did was unplug my desktop computer, set it inside the biggest tote bag I owned, and carry the bag to the garage of my building in Echo Park so it could ride next to me on the passenger seat. I didn’t know where I was going.
There was a time when I’d have headed north to Oakland, where my sister, Jenny, lived with her husband and their 7- and 11-year-old daughters. But now my sister was barely speaking to me. Our parents were no longer living, and most of my friends in L.A. were also married with kids, and seemed to have their hands more than full with online school. My closest single friend, Nora, had decamped to Florida, pulled her 92-year-old mother from her super-spreader nursing home, and moved them both into an Embassy Suites.
I headed northeast. That first night on the road, after crossing Utah, I stayed at a hotel off the highway in Grand Junction, Colorado, and when I woke up in the morning, I thought, Madison. Though I hadn’t been back since graduating from UW more than 20 years before, I figured my familiarity with the city would prevent me from becoming completely untethered to the rest of the human species. Before checking out of the Grand Junction hotel, I’d found a Madison Airbnb, and when I parked in front of the house a day and a half later, after a night at a hotel in Omaha, a boy in a blue T-shirt and a chartreuse helmet was riding his bike in circles on the street. As I shut my car door, the boy asked, “Are you the renter from California?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You can’t have any pets,” he said. “Not even an iguana.”
“Does the Airbnb belong to your family?” I’d chosen it hastily and could remember only that it had a sunporch.
He nodded, then pointed to the house next door to the Airbnb, a forest-green Craftsman. “We own that one too, but we don’t rent it out. We live in it. Have you ever had sleep paralysis?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Sometimes people see a demon sitting at the end of their bed. It’s not dangerous, though. It’s a harmless neurological disturbance.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“A lucid dream is when you know you’re dreaming. You can train yourself to control what happens in lucid dreams, but there’s a risk you’ll develop sleep problems. I’m 10. How old are you?”
“I’m 44. I think I’d remember it if I’d ever seen a demon sitting at the end of my bed.”
“Do you have kids?”
“I don’t. In addition to not having pets.”
“Why not?”
“I like kids, but I never really wanted to be a mother.” Was this an inappropriate way to talk to a 10-year-old? I wondered if my sister would disapprove, which hadn’t been a thing I’d wondered much before our estrangement.
“My mom’s a pediatric emergency doctor, and my dad takes care of the rental properties. I have two half sisters because my dad used to be married to someone else, but they’re grown-ups.”
This was when a woman appeared on the porch next door and said, “Jake, you better not be asking her if she’s ever had sleep paralysis.” To me, she said, “Bethany, right? Welcome to Madison. I’m Holly. Have you eaten yet? We ordered too much pizza, if you want some. And we didn’t touch the pieces we didn’t eat, if you’re worried about that.”
From his bike, Jake said, “She doesn’t have any kids or pets, and she’s a year younger than you.” Then he rode away.
I glanced at my watch and, seeing that it was 20 minutes past five, said, “Sure, I’ll take a slice of pizza.” I wondered if they were having a late lunch or an early dinner. Soon, within a week or two, that would seem like a preposterous question.
Comet was a mix of border collie and a few other mystery breeds. As we headed toward the park, I said, “So I finally emailed my agent a couple hours ago to say I don’t want to do the Chandler stuff anymore, and about five minutes later, I got word back that Chandler wants to have a face-to-face meeting.”
“No shit she does!” Holly said. “Because you’re awesome!” I’d never been certain if the great enthusiasm Holly expressed about any job-related tidbit I divulged was a form of midwestern politeness—Holly had lived in Madison her entire life, except for college at the University of Minnesota—or if it was guileless excitement about Hollywood. “When?” she asked.
“Unclear. I still hate her, though.”
“What are you going to wear? Do we need to go shopping?”
“It’s a Zoom,” I said. “Not that it would matter what I wear even if it were in person.”
“What the hell? She should fly you out there.”
“If it makes you feel better, I bet she’d meet with me in person if I were in L.A. But it’s not worth it to get on a plane.”
“It might be worth it to see the inside of her house.”
“I’ve been in rich people’s houses before,” I said. “They’re big and uncluttered.”
“I’m so jealous.” Holly laughed. “Not of the ‘big’ part.” I hadn’t entered Holly’s house until I’d been in Madison more than a year and had been vaccinated. It was medium messy—not tidy for sure, but no worse than my sister’s house in terms of shoes and coats and mail by the front door, or random containers of croissants or rotting bananas on the kitchen counter. Over three nights, Holly and I had watched the entire season of a reality show about people trying to survive in the Amazon rainforest, but the week before, after the COVID breakthroughs on the East Coast, she’d said we should stop going in each other’s houses again.
“Chandler’s like a shitty boyfriend,” I said. “Now that I’m done with her, she probably wants to tell me how into me she is.”
“Did you ever ask to meet with her before? Maybe she didn’t know you wanted to.”
“I don’t want to. And no, we’ve never met, but she posts pictures of other people on her—” I made air quotes “—‘team.’ Like her hair-and-makeup person or whoever. Not a lot, but occasionally.”
“But she has to keep you secret, right? So everyone thinks your cleverness is her cleverness.”
The observation wasn’t incorrect, and I was quiet as Comet sniffed the base of a cedar tree. After a few seconds, I said, “I’ve never once had direct contact with her in almost five years. At some point, I’d have appreciated it if she thanked me. Not publicly, but privately. And not with, like, a letter written on linen paper. Just send me a fucking fruit basket.”
“Oh, she definitely should have sent you a fruit basket,” Holly said while Comet lifted a hind leg. “The fancy kind with pineapple and kiwi. I’m going to look online and come up with some ideas of what you should wear for your Zoom.”
“That’s a horrible use of your time.”
“Possibly,” she said. “But more fun than reading an article about cytokine response in zero-to-18-year-olds.”
“Then let me know what you find.”
It had taken me about seven minutes, one night in 2017, to crack the 40-something-actress-on-social-media code. The reason I cracked it so efficiently might have been that I’d just taken an edible, then eaten two-thirds of a pan of Rice Krispies treats before finishing my application to be Chandler Quinn’s social-media ghostwriter. Or it might have been because I also was a white woman who came of age in the 1980s, and the code wasn’t subtle.
Either way: The posts that did best from middlingly successful, middle-aged Hollywood actresses had the ostensible point of, Look how silly and dorky and harried by my kids I am. The subtext was, But based on this photo, look how thin and attractive I am. So it would be a woman wearing a fuzzy orange bathrobe and matching slippers, eating (or presumably “eating”) a doughnut, and it would read “#SundayVibes,” but she’d clearly had her hair and makeup done by a professional, and the belt of the bathrobe was tightly cinched to show her slender waist. Or a woman sat on the floor of a toy-strewn playroom, a nearby toddler and a slightly older child captured mid-jump off a couch, with the caption: They claim it ALL sparks joy. The woman’s prettiness and thinness didn’t need to be explicit; you could glean it from her cheekbones or wrists.
This is the hike I went on today with my bestie (while being thin).
This is the not-overtly-sexy-but-actually-extremely-form-fitting caterpillar Halloween costume I wore to my kids’ school (while being thin).
I woke up like this (while being thin).
My application notwithstanding, being the ghostwriter for a middlingly successful actress wasn’t a job I wanted. The job I wanted was one I’d thought it would take me a year or two to get after I’d moved to L.A., which was to work in the writers’ room of a show I watched for pleasure. Instead, over a decade and a half, I’d been on the staff of nine unfunny family comedies while annually writing my own pilot, which usually got optioned and never got made. When my agent, who worked at the same huge agency as Chandler Quinn’s agent, had called to tell me about the opening with Chandler—it was not, for obvious reasons, an advertised position—she had said, “Maybe just for some pocket money? You could do it in your sleep.”
Probably not coincidentally, Chandler also seemed then to be past her prime, which perhaps she also had failed to recognize as such until afterward. She’d been a supporting actress—the best friend in more than one megahit—for 20 years. Though she looked younger than me, she was two years older—in 2017, I was 41, and she was 43—and I suspected that in deciding to “ramp up her socials,” as my agent put it, Chandler was trying to extend her on-screen expiration date. For five original posts a week, subject to the approval of Chandler or her representative, the pay would be $30,000 for six months, no benefits, and the terms would be renewable if mutually agreed upon. I’d provide photos only if no people were in them; otherwise, they’d be taken by a member of her team (by her 23-year-old assistant Becca, I soon found out, after Becca and I exchanged 12 texts to discuss whether the parsley I’d mentioned getting stuck in Chandler’s teeth [while being thin] was curly or flat and which teeth I envisioned it between).
My writing sample for Chandler’s agent and manager had been 10 posts. On the night I worked on them, Chandler had 88,000 followers on Instagram and 23,000 on Facebook, and wasn’t on Twitter. (I had 1,407 followers on Twitter under the handle @JoanOhioRivers, a nod to my upbringing in Pittsburgh, and wasn’t on Instagram or Facebook.) I wasn’t sure if it showed due diligence or just seemed creepy that I’d looked up the real names and ages of Chandler’s kids (Declan was then 7, and Madelyn then 5), but I went with due diligence; because she was divorced from her director ex-husband, I didn’t need to ponder him.
Idea 1: Photo: CHANDLER, DECLAN, and MADELYN stand at their kitchen table, a platter showing a rocket-shaped cake that’s very lopsided and phallic. Chandler is dressed casually in matching leggings and a sports bra, hair in a ponytail. Text: “Nothing weird about putting this ‘rocket cake’ in my mouth, am I right?!” (Could include second photo with slice of half-eaten cake and additional text: “Update: It was delicious!”)
Idea 2: Photo: CHANDLER sits on the floor in butterfly pose while DECLAN and MADELYN have a pillow fight in the background. Text: “Yoga is so calming. 🙏🤪”
Idea 3: Photo: A selfie CHANDLER has taken from the driver’s seat of her car, with DECLAN and MADELYN visible in the back seat, all of them holding food in wrappers from a fast-food or fast-casual chain (Burger King? Chipotle?). Text: “Just another home-cooked meal consumed at our elegant dining room table in our spotless home! 🤣🤣”
Thirty-six hours after I’d emailed my ideas and the signed NDA, Chandler’s agent’s assistant reached out to schedule an in-person meeting with her agent and manager, and two days later, I was offered the position. I accepted and violated the NDA that night by describing the gig over drinks with my friend Nora.
Months later, after multiple articles with headlines such as “Is Chandler Quinn Hollywood’s Most Relatable Mom?” and “18 Times Chandler Quinn Made Us Love Her Even More,” which were nothing but roundups of posts I’d written, I received no extra money, because the wording in my contract did not stipulate bonuses. When the Association of North American Maple Syrup Sellers hired Chandler as their spokesperson for a reported $2 million, I also earned nothing, because my contract didn’t mention endorsement deals. And I received nothing when she became the star of a quasi-autobiographical network sitcom in the fall of 2018 with a starting salary of $160,000 an episode. Admittedly, I didn’t watch the sitcom, but I did know, because my sister told me, that at least one line of dialogue had been taken directly from Chandler’s social-media accounts. When Chandler’s adorable TV daughter saw her in the shower, she exclaimed, “Mommy, you look like a gorilla!” Did it make it all better or worse that I had taken this line from an encounter my sister had had with one of her own daughters?
In the afternoon, while I was walking around Lake Mendota and listening to a podcast about a cult in Washington State, my phone buzzed. Holly had texted me a screenshot from the website of an upscale professional women’s clothing brand. The model was wearing white palazzo pants and a cropped orange sleeveless sweater.
Holly’s next text read: For Chandler Zoom
I texted back, You really don’t have to do this
From her: Performed a needle thoracostomy this morning on 14yo, need distraction
From me: Okay but I never wear sleeveless
A link followed for a floral blouse with long sleeves.
From her: Why not?
From me: Jiggly upper arms
From her: Should this undermine your cred as my body positivity coach?
From me: It should make you respect how hard-won my cred is
From her: Who are we kidding, I’d never want to be friends with someone who isn’t hypocritical
Yet another link came in, for a knit short-sleeved sweater.
From me: Srsly this is such a waste of your time
From me: Morally and nutritionally
From her: Probably unworthy of a celebrity but if you’re in mood for more fat-me-downs, last night I found possible shirt
From her: Silk turquoise blouse
Standing beside the lake, I Googled needle thoracostomy then texted Holly: Why needle thoracostomy?
From her: You should definitely wear sleeveless. I’ve seen your upper arms and they’re 🔥🔥
From her: Unresponsive after ATV accident
From me: Will kid be ok?
From her: I hope so
For a period of 48 hours after I’d accepted Holly’s leftover pizza on my first afternoon in Madison, I hadn’t spoken to another human. I’d ordered groceries, which were left on the front porch; I’d watched the third season of a prestige cable series, then gone back and rewatched the first and second seasons, planning to take notes on how the writers made the dialogue land, especially for the final line in each scene, but repeatedly becoming so absorbed that I’d forgotten to; I’d taken walks wearing a mask, and when I’d approached another person, I’d preemptively stepped off the curb 20 feet ahead of time.
That first day, I’d exchanged phone numbers with Holly, then saved her in my phone as Holly Landlord. On the evening of my third day, I received a text from her: How tall are you
I texted back, 5’7”
From her: Went through my closet over the weekend, have some pretty nice clothes that don’t fit anymore. Want to see?
From her: I believe the term is fat-me-downs
From her: 😂
More to avoid offending my new landlord than because I really wanted her clothes, I replied, Sure!
A few minutes later, we were standing eight feet apart on my porch, each of us rooting through a garbage bag. The clothes were indeed nice, certainly nicer than I needed during a pandemic and probably ever—silk blouses, wool twill blazers and matching pants—and I kept most of them. “I used to think dressing professionally at work mattered,” she said. “I’d had a mentor who came up in the ’70s, when there were way fewer female physicians, and she convinced me of it. Then one day, and this was a couple years ago, nothing to do with COVID, I got vomited on for the hundredth time, and I was like, Screw it. I’ve been wearing scrubs ever since.”
As we sorted through the bags, we discussed our jobs, my time as an undergraduate in Madison, how people in L.A. wore parkas when the temperature fell below 60 degrees but people in Wisconsin didn’t wear them when it was below 20, and the surreality of the shutdown. She said that the most sacred part of her job was when a patient had a horrible diagnosis, like a brain tumor, and she was about to enter the room and tell the family, knowing their lives would change. Then she said that the previous evening, she and Ted and Jake had had a movie-and-popcorn night, and when she’d put on her pajamas before bed, she’d found a corn kernel in her bra. I explained that Echo Park was about 20 minutes east of Hollywood, and that Hollywood wasn’t really where major celebrities lived. Then I thanked her, and she returned to her house. Ten minutes later, I texted to see if she wanted to come back to my porch for a beer or a glass of wine. Immediately, I regretted it and was filled with the same graspy feeling I often had as a journeyman TV writer at a party with showrunners. Thirty seconds later, Holly texted back, I thought you’d never ask!
I sat on the porch steps, and she sat in a lawn chair in the grass, facing me. We both were drinking a bougie local beer from aluminum cans, and I was telling her about a movie star who’d been a heartthrob in our youth and was now close to 60. Holly said, “So his marriage to that girl was fake or not fake?”
“It depends on your definition of fake,” I said. “If we assume that he’s a narcissist—a talented and hardworking narcissist, but a narcissist—and also that he’s been living in a weird fame snow globe since the mid-’80s, I don’t think that kind of person has the capacity for what most people would consider a relationship.” I took a sip of beer. “Not that I should talk.”
“Have you been married?”
I shook my head. “Engaged five years ago, called it off, nothing serious since.”
“Do you want to be in a relationship?”
“Less than I can possibly convey.” There were a few seconds of silence, then I said, “I’ve wondered if I’m asexual.” I’d never previously said this aloud, but maybe what happened in a pandemic stayed in a pandemic? Or did it matter if it didn’t?
She nodded as neutrally as if I’d said I was a pescatarian. “I know this isn’t what asexual means, but—” She lowered her voice. “Half the time when Ted and I do it, I’m like, This is great, it’s hot, I’m feeling it. And the other half of the time, I’m like, This heaving, flesh-slapping sweatfest is revolting. We’re doing this voluntarily? For pleasure? I assume it’s connected to my menstrual cycle.”
“There’s a reason Shakespeare called it making the beast with two backs.”
Holly grinned. “I’m so glad my fat-me-downs will have a second life with you. Some of that shit was expensive.”
“I can tell.”
“I can’t believe I’m about to admit this, but right after the New Year, I was in the grocery-store checkout line looking at one of those magazines about people who’ve lost huge amounts of weight. I thought, What if I pretend to myself that I used to weigh 500 pounds? Like instead of now being the most I’ve ever weighed, I act like I’m one of the success stories and, through careful diet and exercise, I’ve lost over half my weight.” She looked at me intently and said, “That’s so fucked up, right?”
I shrugged. “It’s a little fucked up, but I’m in no position to judge. I’m like the poster child for yo-yo dieting. It sort of comes with the territory of writing for TV, because you’re either working 16 hours a day and surrounded by craft-services food, or you’re on hiatus and have all the time in the world to exercise and plan your meals. The most I ever gained during a season was 33 pounds, and the least was 12.”
“Then how do you lose the weight?”
“Every method that exists. I’ve tried them all. Intermittent fasting, low-carb, paleo, three smoothies a day.” I hadn’t at that point tried Ozempic, but only because it wasn’t widely available and I didn’t yet know it existed. To Holly, I added, “It’s all so fucking boring, right?”
“Hmm,” she said. “Maybe demoralizing more than boring? But does it bother you when your weight is higher?”
“No, because I’m immune to the cultural norms our patriarchal society has imposed on women in order to undermine our self-esteem and waste our time.” I rolled my eyes. “Of course it bothers me! I guess I assume that most women our age have a moderately to intensely disordered relationship with food. I read fashion magazines growing up, and any clothing spread back then would be, like, four anorexic white women, one anorexic Black woman, and one white woman who was probably only moderately anorexic and was presented as plump and curvy.”
Holly laughed. “When my friend Gina and I were in sixth grade, her aunt told us that if we stood naked in front of the mirror and jumped up and down, if any part of our body jiggled, it meant we needed to lose weight.”
We both chuckled darkly, and Holly added, “But is it really any better today?”
“I think it’s better and worse. Women appear in ads now who really are curvy, not just curvy compared to anorexic, or who have vitiligo or a prosthetic leg.”
“True,” Holly said. “But what about the cesspool of social media?”
“Do you know who Chandler Quinn is? The actress?”
Holly squinted. “Maybe?” Obviously, this meant no, which I found gratifying.
“I have a side hustle being her social-media ghostwriter,” I said. “She has a sitcom called The Chandler Show, and if you’ve never seen it, that means more of your brain cells are intact. Anyway, I write her posts for Instagram and Facebook and stuff.”
“Cool!” Holly said.
“Actually not,” I said. “The opposite of cool, in fact. But it’s easy money.”
“You know how there are women of our grandmas’ generation where they could have been an astronaut if only they’d been born 20 years later? That’s how I feel about body positivity. Like, love the idea of it, too bad I missed out.”
I laughed. “Maybe in our next lives.”
In the 17 months since then, Holly’s son, Jake, and I had had countless conversations about telekinesis, UFOlogy, Sasquatch, and the Titanic; I’d exchanged nothing but passing greetings with Holly’s husband, Ted, usually when I ran into him as he was leaving for or returning from a bike ride, and I’d directed any renter questions I had to Holly herself; and the only fat-me-down I’d worn was a yellow puffer jacket.
And then I wore another fat-me-down for my call with Chandler, a white button-down shirt, and the funny thing, though not funny ha ha, was that Chandler, too, was wearing a white button-down, but mine was from Ann Taylor circa 2015 and Chandler’s had probably cost $800. The room she was in was large and very light—it was three in the afternoon in California and five in Wisconsin—and three framed prints of birds hung in a row on the wall several feet behind her.
“Bethany!” Chandler said with great warmth. “My alter ego! Hello, hello, hello! Is it okay if I virtual-hug you?” On-screen, she held up both arms and wrapped them around nothing.
Flatly, I said, “Nice to meet you too.” Of course I’d joined the call first and waited for her; I’d wondered if her agent and manager would also be present, but neither of them was.
“Sheila said you’ve been riding out the pandy in Wisconsin,” she said. “Is that where you’re from?” Sheila was Chandler’s manager.
“Where I went to college,” I said. “I’m from Pittsburgh.”
“Well, I wish I could have you to my house for lunch. I make a mean deconstructed shrimp salad.”
I was tempted to point out that we’d lived 10 miles apart for the first three years I’d worked for her, but I just said, “I’m not much of a shellfish eater.” I sounded to myself like my dad at his most gruff and awkward, which had been extremely gruff and extremely awkward.
Chandler smiled a broad and very pretty smile. She had dark hair, big eyes, high cheekbones, and a square but delicate jaw, and I assumed she’d had work done on her face, some smoothing or plumping or buffing, but a sign of the quality was that I wasn’t certain what work. “So,” she said, “thank you from the bottom of my heart for making me seem cool and funny and way smarter than I am. Do you know why I thought we should never meet?”
The confirmation that she really had been keeping me at a distance was weirdly validating. “No,” I said. “I don’t know.”
“Because from the beginning, it was so obvious that you were writing a character. A chill, funny mom character. And I wish I were more like her, but I’m not, and I worried that if you knew that, it would make it harder for you to come up with material.”
“Do you know I’ve written for TV forever? And I’m well aware the characters aren’t real people.”
“But I’m a real person.” She paused. “I want to be like your idea of me, but I’m way more vain and grumpy.” While I did find this claim endearing, I was unsure, as I’d been with every celebrity I’d ever met except the outright rude ones, of the proportions of her sincerity and her pandering. She continued, “When the folks at the agency told me you don’t feel appreciated, seriously, it made me feel awful, because I’ve always appreciated you so much.”
“Just to be clear,” I said, “I didn’t tell the agents I feel unappreciated. I quit.”
“No, right,” she said. “I’m trying to say that I get it. If I were you, I’d be frustrated. But I want to share how this all looks from my perspective. In 2014, within a week, I find out the show I’m on hasn’t been renewed, my husband leaves me, and I turn 40. I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t know when I say the industry wants to put women like me out to pasture and replace us with 22-year-olds with perky tits. But what I try to do, what I hope I have done, with your help, is rewrite that narrative. I’m like, you know what? No. I’m going to have a second act. I’m going to be honest that life is sometimes shitty, and at the same time, I’m not going to let the shit define me. I’m going to make lemonade and tell my own story. And I’m going to use my platform to bring in other women and elevate all of us. I feel grateful as hell for the role you’ve played in allowing me to do that, and if I haven’t conveyed that, my bad.”
Looking at her pretty face over Zoom, I wondered if I could triple the amount I was being paid. Not that I’d ever discuss numbers directly with her, but wasn’t she all but encouraging me to take it up with the agents? And I could feel how easy continuing to be her ghostwriter would be, like sinking backwards into a soft couch.
Instead, I said, “When you talk about elevating other women—how would you say you’re doing that?”
Her eyes narrowed, and I perceived her perceiving me. Perhaps until this point, she’d thought I was merely awkward rather than antagonistic. In a markedly less warm tone, she said, “For starters, I’m on the board of I’ve Got You.” This was a recently formed and widely mocked nonprofit in which established white women in the entertainment industry mentored women of color. “I also do a lot with the DONNA Foundation to promote breast-cancer screenings. And I try to work with female designers and jewelers for my big events, not that any of us have been doing events for a while now.”
I could feel the adrenaline in my bloodstream. Was I really about to do this? Apparently I was. “The posts I write for you are formulaic,” I said. “Right? We can both admit that. And the formula is a self-deprecating sentiment juxtaposed with your attractiveness. And I guess that’s not inherently wrong in theory, but in practice what both of us are doing is showing off how thin and hot you are in a way that makes normal women feel bad about themselves, because it doesn’t acknowledge how much your appearance is tied to your financial privilege and your staff and all that. Even noncelebrity women who are privileged themselves and smart enough to know better—even they feel like you’re the standard of how someone in her 40s is supposed to look and like they’re gross or failures. A specific woman doesn’t need to follow you on social media for you to be part of reinforcing this dynamic in the culture.”
“Wow.” Chandler blinked a few times, looking almost amused, then didn’t say anything else.
“I’m complicit,” I said. “Or I have been. But I don’t want to be anymore.”
“Just so I understand,” Chandler said, and I knew from her inflection that even if I wanted to continue as her ghostwriter, the option was, as of the past few seconds, no longer available, “you’re holding me personally accountable for the fact that film and TV actresses are expected to be thin?”
“It’s not the thinness per se,” I said. “It’s the disingenuousness. At this point, I’d be more comfortable writing posts for you that are like, ‘This is my workout and this is the juice fast I do.’ It’s the posts that show you about to eat a huge carrot muffin that you supposedly stress-baked, and you’re saying, ‘No, seriously, it’s for the vitamin A,’ but I assume you ate between zero and two bites.” I wasn’t sure if she’d know I was referring to a real post—if she’d remember it, or if she’d ever seen it to begin with.
“Do you think I don’t eat food? I eat food.”
The claim made me almost certain that by my definition, she didn’t—that in a given day, she ate, say, a handful of nuts. What person who ate food needed to affirm that she did? I said, “Remember the post about how, once you had a daughter, you made this vow to yourself to never insult your body in front of her and how it helped you realize that you should have been practicing kindness to yourself all along?”
“Of course I remember it,” she said.
This had been her most popular post ever. With particular depravity, I’d started it, “Real talk …” and I’d known it would be well received, though I’d underestimated its popularity. “I took that from my sister,” I said. “She’s the one who made that vow. She has two daughters, one who’s 8 now and one who’s 12. I’d borrowed other stuff from my sister before. I always thought she got a kick out of it, but she was very upset that time.”
In fact, after the post had gone up, even before it had gone viral, Jenny had texted, I don’t appreciate you stealing my life, and I’d called her immediately and said, “But you’re my muse. I’ve used stuff from you a bunch of times.”
“No shit,” Jenny had said.
I was genuinely taken aback. “If you didn’t like it, then why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Why was it my responsibility to tell you I didn’t want you using my experiences for some vapid actress’s self-promotion? Anyway, I’m telling you now.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I definitely didn’t know it bothered you, and I won’t do it again.”
“I also want you to take the post down.” She said this casually.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Why can’t you?”
“I’m not the one who literally hits ‘Share.’ It’s an assistant. I don’t even know Chandler’s passwords.”
“Then ask the assistant.”
“The way my contract is set up—trust me, I can’t.”
A silence ensued before she said, “It’s so messed up that you cashed in on a heartfelt promise I made to myself to be a good mother and role model.”
“You know that in writers’ rooms, people vomit out details from their lives all day long and they go right into the scripts?” I said, then added, “Even though I can’t fix this mistake, I really won’t do it again.”
It occurred to me that Jenny could write her own post for her 126 Instagram followers about what I’d done, and at some level, I hoped she would—despite Jenny’s tiny following, such a post could also go viral, and in doing so reveal that I’d violated my NDA and result in my termination—but what Jenny did instead was cut me out of her life. A month later, when I asked about the timing of my visit to Oakland for my older niece’s 11th birthday, Jenny texted back, Let’s sit this year out.
Two months after that, things shut down. Before leaving L.A., I’d texted Jenny to ask how her family was doing, and she’d replied, Surreal, Annie and Val’s school is going “virtual” after spring break
So strange! I’d replied. Thinking of getting out of L.A.
Wish I could invite you to come here but just doesn’t feel right, she replied.
You’re still mad because of the Chandler post? I asked.
Not mad, she replied. Uncomfortable with your cynicism
I didn’t respond, and a minute later, as if clarification was necessary, she added, Just don’t want that energy under my roof
Over Zoom, I said to Chandler, “I apologized to my sister, but she basically still isn’t speaking to me, even though it’s been a year and a half. She wanted me to take the post down, and I tried to explain that I couldn’t, but I don’t think she believed me.”
Chandler made an almost-expression that probably would have been her brow furrowing if she hadn’t had procedures that precluded a furrowed brow. “We can take it down,” she said.
This wasn’t what I’d expected. “That’s not the point,” I said. “Also, since it went viral, there are screenshots everywhere. The toothpaste is out of the tube on that one.”
“Did you apologize to your sister?”
“Repeatedly,” I said.
“Do you have other siblings?”
I shook my head. I knew that Chandler had an older brother and sister, both of whom had normie jobs—the brother was a nurse, and the sister was a real-estate agent. I’d once written a post about both of Chandler’s kids trying on Auntie Lauren’s heels.
“Were you and your sister close before this?” Chandler asked.
“I thought we were each other’s best friends,” I said.
“You really need to make it right with her,” Chandler said. “There’s no substitute for family. Now that some time has passed, maybe you could write her a letter?”
A part of me wanted to say, Do you not get that this is all your fault? Another part of me recognized that none of it, not even a small bit, could be blamed on Chandler.
“Then again,” she said, and her tone was musing, not hostile. I knew it was unlikely I’d ever speak to her after this in any context. “Sometimes you have to let people figure things out on their own.”
I was walking along Lake Mendota when Holly’s text came in at 6:30 p.m. I have an idea of how to celebrate Chandler call
I replied, No need to celebrate
We didn’t make amends
Or whatever
Still owe her 11 posts but it’s done
Holly replied: That IS reason to celebrate right? It’s what you wanted?
On the path along the lake, I stopped. For a long time, it had been strangely hard for me to distinguish between successes and failures. I typed, What’s your idea
From her: Hot fudge sundaes
From her: I’m at Hy-Vee rn getting ice cream
From her: Meet in half hour?
From me: Okay, my porch?
From her: Do you like maraschino cherries
From her: Yes your porch
From me: Yes cherries
“You know the other night when you gave me the leftover corn dog and kale salad?” I said. “I took a picture of it. How would you feel if I turned it in as one of my remaining Chandler posts? Be honest. I mean, I ate them too. They went into my stomach.”
“Oh my God.” Holly’s voice was ebullient. “Like, my corn dog would be famous? That would be the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. Which shirt did you end up wearing?”
“Your white button-down from Ann Taylor,” I said.
“Classic.”
“She was wearing a very similar shirt. White and everything.”
“Except hers for sure wasn’t Ann Taylor.”
“I had the same thought. You realize that you won’t be credited for the corn dog and kale? The world won’t know it was yours.”
“I’ll know,” she said. “Can I see the picture you took?”
We were sitting on opposite sides of the top step of the porch, with pale-blue ceramic bowls on our laps and the sundae ingredients, including a melting pint of high-quality vanilla ice cream, between us. I pulled my phone from my pocket and held it out to her. She removed her glasses, peered at the screen, and said, “Gorgeous.”
I set my phone down on the porch and we both were quiet, and it was a warm, perfect midwestern summer night punctuated by the sounds of cicadas and leaves stirring in the breeze and the shouts of kids down the street.
After a few seconds, Holly said, “So Chandler sucked?”
“Unfortunately, I didn’t dislike her as much as I’d planned to.”
Holly laughed. “Bummer. But you still quit?”
“I’d already quit before we Zoomed. I just didn’t unquit.” After a beat, I added, “Which means I need to get hired for another writers’ room before I run out of money, which means I should start thinking about heading back to L.A.” The whole time I’d been in Madison, I’d been paying two rents, which was doable if I was Chandler’s ghostwriter and not if I wasn’t.
“Don’t writers’ rooms exist over Zoom now?” Holly said.
“Some do. And I’ve thought about that, but I’m afraid if I don’t return to the world of people pretty soon, I might never be able to. I might go around some bend.”
“I don’t want you to go around a bend that you don’t want to go around,” Holly said. “But it sure won’t be as fun here without you.”
“Yeah.” I exhaled. “I’ve always wanted to say—and it’s never seemed like the right moment—and this will probably sound totally weird and grim, but it’s true.” I paused, which again made the summer-evening noises audible. “If I hadn’t met you during lockdown, I hope that I wouldn’t have killed myself, but I think I might have.”
“Oh gosh,” Holly said, but there was something in her Oh gosh that wasn’t shocked. “That’s the darkest compliment I’ve ever gotten.”
“It’s the darkest compliment I’ve ever given.”
“Do you still think about killing yourself?”
“No.” I was telling the truth. “In this moment, I feel happy.” I gestured with my spoon at the bowl on my lap. “This is so fucking good. I kind of forgot that hot-fudge sundaes exist.”
Holly laughed. “I feel happy right now too,” she said.
