The Talk Show
Emma
It had to happen at some point, but I was hoping to actually be well on the other side of this whole thing before it did.
I’m standing in the green room of Ida!, the upstart, feel-good talk show that’s supposed to replace Oprah, even though we all know that that’s never going to happen.
Nobody replaces Oprah.
I’m on in a few minutes, and they’ve devoted the whole show to talking about the second worst period of my life.
This should be something really special.
There’s a TV in here, tuned to the station Ida! gets broadcast on, and the promo comes on the screen, “Today, on Ida…”
The music is very somber, even a little tense at times.
“Jesus,” I mutter to myself, “I’m the fucking Hollywood sob story.”
The promo continues, “…after a long road to fame and fortune, Emma Roxy…” and I just tune out.
This feels like a bad sitcom where the writers decide they’re going to show their range and do a sad episode, only it almost never works out. They did a couple of those episodes on Fresh Prince that weren’t bad, but that’s really neither here nor there.
“Emma?” a man in a very busy sweater says, speaking as if he’s interrupting a funeral.
“Yeah?” I respond, facing him.
“We’re about ready for you. I’ll escort you to where you’re just on stage and I’ll cue you when it’s time to go out. Did you have a chance to walk over the set and kind of get an idea where you’re going?”
“Yeah,” I lie. I didn’t need a tour of the set. It’s actually a guilty pleasure of mine.
“Great,” he says. “If you’ll just follow me…”
We walk down the hallways and everyone I pass gives me the kind of smile people give when you’re a kid and your dog just died. It’s that smile that’s supposed to communicate, “I know you’re going through a rough time, kiddo,” but always comes across more like, “When can I get out of here? This whole thing is really bumming me out.”
Smiles are rather expressive, you know.
We get to the side of the stage, just out of view of the cameras and the audience, and the man in the sweater takes my hand in both of his and says, “Because we’re taping this for later, commercial breaks are going to be pretty short, usually just a couple of minutes for Ida to go over her notes, that sort of thing. If you need to take a break, let Ida know and they’ll stop filming until you’ve had a chance to collect yourself. I’m going to be right here with you while you’re waiting, I’ll be standing right here while you’re on and I’ll be right here when you’re done, okay?”
They really know how to do the sympathy thing around here, don’t they?
A couple of minutes go by and I’m waiting. I was kind of hoping to meet Ida Falcone before I went out there, but it’s not my set.
There’s the uproar of applause, and my heart starts pounding hard and fast.
Sweater guy isn’t helping things, as he’s still holding my hand and gripping it a little tighter as every second passes, bringing ever closer my no doubt heartbreaking tale of abuse and blackmail. I can see why they’d think it’d make for good television.
From off set I can hear Ida starting the show.
“Welcome everyone to a very special show. Tonight, we’re going to be talking to Emma Roxy, who—” she’s interrupted by a strange applause. “Yeah,” she says as every member of the audience tries to show just how kindhearted and sympathetic they are for supporting a wretch like me. “As you all know,” she says, “Emma’s filming a new movie with Damian Jones—” another applause break, and I stop listening.
“Tell me when it’s time for me to go on, will you?” I ask.
“Of course,” Sweater Guy says, and I walk away from the stage entrance a little to pour myself a cup of water from a nearby water cooler.
I take a sip.
Usually, when I get nervous, I try to battle my nerves and work through the situation, but now, I’m just trying to clear my mind. I’ve gone over the story enough times in my head and in my house by myself that I think I’m comfortable with whatever she can throw at me, but that doesn’t change any part of the story I’m going to have to tell.
“Emma?” Sweater Guy says, and I set my cup down and walk over to him. “It’s just going to be a few seconds,” he says. “Are you ready?”
“Nope,” I answer.
On the stage, Ida announces, “Miss Emma Roxy!” and I pat Sweater Guy on the shoulder as I walk past him and onto the stage, waving at the drama-thirsty audience as I make my way toward Ida.
She gives me a big hug that I have to bend down for, as she’s a lot shorter in real life than she looks on TV, and I just wish everyone in the audience would just drop right fucking dead.
I’m sure they’re decent people, but the fact of the matter is that they’re in this room with me right now and because of that, I hate everything about them.
“I’m so glad you could make it,” Ida says through the continuing cacophony, and I smile and I nod my head.
“I’m glad to be here,” I respond, though I’m sure not even Ida could hear it.
We sit down and the applause slowly dies down.
“Emma,” Ida says, “I know we’re going to be talking about a lot of harrowing things today, and I would just like to tell you that I admire you, so much—” the audience starts in again with their fucking clapping, and I’m trying to hide my contempt. “Really,” Ida says. “I think that you are a strong role model for our children, and I am so excited that you’ve got your entire career ahead of you.”
“Thanks,” I answer.
“Now, this all started just a few months ago after you started on your new film, right?” she asks.
“That’s when I first heard from him,” I tell her. “I hadn’t spoken to him for about a year before that.”
“Did you ever suspect that he might do something like this?” she asks.
“With people like him,” I tell her, “you learn to expect the worst at all times. I don’t think it ever crossed my mind that he would do this specific thing, but—”
“—but he was just that kind of guy, huh?” she interrupts.
“You could say that,” I tell her. “I think I always knew, even after we broke up, that he wasn’t just going to let me go—”
“He was controlling?” Ida interrupts again, and she’s really starting to irritate me with all the interrupting.
“Very controlling,” I answer. “Everything always had to be exactly the way that he wanted it, and that everything included me. For a while there,” I tell her, the studio audience, and a couple million viewers at home, “I was, effectively, his captive. Even when he wasn’t around, he—”
“So, if you don’t mind talking about it—” Ida starts.
“That’s why I’m here,” I interrupt out of spite, hoping she takes the hint and learns how to let me finish a sentence.
“How did the two of you first meet?” she asks. “You and Mr. Cole, that is.”
“I first met Ben a couple years ago,” I start. “I was doing made-for-TV movies and he was the first guy I met in a bar who’d actually seen one of them. That was a pretty big deal for me at the time.”
The audience laughs.
“So, you met him in a bar?” Ida asks, and it’s really difficult to tell through all that makeup if she’s being judgmental or not.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “I was there for a wrap party with the cast of one of my movies and he recognized me. We started talking and one thing led to another—”
“So, how long into the relationship was it before you knew that Ben had this side?” Ida asks.
I want to scream.
“It’s not a side,” I tell her. “It’s him. The abuse, the whole nightmare, that’s just who he is. He’s a person that enjoys hurting people. The charming guy I met in the bar—it wasn’t a side. It was an act.”
“So, it happened pretty quickly then?” Ida asks. She’s pushing for more information, and she’s trying to do it in a way that nobody but me knows just what a bitch she’s being.
“The formal abuse or whatever you want to call it,” I tell her, “that took a couple of months, but the warning signs were all there from the start. He’d get really upset over the smallest things, things that didn’t even make sense to get upset about, you know? At first, he would stay quiet about it, but you could just see him shaking from the anger.”
“When did it finally take that turn for the worse?” Ida asks.
The audience is silent. Nobody’s so much as wiping their nose.
This is the money shot. This is why everyone’s here today.
“I think it really took a turn after we got back from visiting his parents,” I tell her. “We got home, and as soon as the door was closed, he was in my face, screaming at me about how I had been impolite to his mother by not taking a piece of pie that she offered—it was always over the stupidest things…”
“Did he hit you?” Ida asks, and I can almost hear her getting wet between the legs thinking about the ratings bump she’s about to get.
“That was the first night he hit me,” I tell her. “I told him that he was being stupid and he slapped me across the face. When I tried to leave, he grabbed me and pulled me to the ground, and that’s when he just started hitting me. I tried to fight him off, but he was too strong. All I could do was curl up and hope that maybe he’d find it in his heart to stop.”
I can actually see a tiny smile flash across Ida’s mouth, but it’s gone so quickly, I doubt the cameras really caught it.
“What happened next?” she asks.
“He was yelling at me while he was hitting me,” I tell her. “He was saying that he’d been so patient with me, but that he’d had enough of my…well, I can’t say the word on TV, but you get the idea. I don’t remember when he stopped hitting me, how long it was, but I do remember that he was out the door and his car was peeling out almost as soon as he did.”
“The pictures of you with the bruises…” she says. “Those were from another time?”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “After that first night, I never knew what was going to set him off. Sometimes, he’d let things that would make a normal person angry go completely, saying they didn’t bother him, while other times, he’d fly off the handle about absolutely nothing, although I do think the pie incident was the most ridiculous reason he ever hit me. Not that there were any good ones.”
A few of the misery junkies in the audience applaud, and within a second or two, the whole crowd is applauding. The funny thing is, I’m not quite sure what it is I said they’re showing their approval for—maybe the “no good reason to hit me” thing?
The crowd calms down again and Ida leans toward me, saying, “Did you try to leave?”
“That kind of depends on your definition of the word ‘try,’” I tell her. “I convinced myself a few hundred times—that’s actually not hyperbole—to leave him, but every time I got close to doing it, I just felt this huge wave of fear rolling through me. I just imagined him tracking me down and what he would do if he caught me trying to leave him. It really wasn’t very easy. Luckily, though, I got—”
“You know,” Ida says, “I hear that so much, that women in these relationships often do want to leave their abusers, but that fear keeps them from doing it.”
“You feel like your life isn’t yours,” I tell her. “You feel like you’re a possession of this person who’s just as likely to put your head through a wall as he is to hold a door open for you. After that first time, he was so apologetic…” I sigh. “You know, before I was with Ben, I used to look at women whose boyfriends or husbands treated them like crap and I used to think they were so weak for going back to them time and time again, but it’s not weakness. You literally feel like you do not have the option to leave until that day comes when you finally decide that enough is enough, and even then, you’re still scared for your life. If anything, you feel like you’re deciding whether you’d rather stop living like you’re living or whether you’d like to keep living. That’s really how it feels and too much of the time, that’s really how it is.”
“What happened that weekend he took those pictures of you?” Ida asks, and it feels like she’s completely ignoring everything I just said.
I try to move my hands out of camera frame because they’re clenched into fists.
“It was a few days before we were supposed to get away and I had just gotten a callback about this role I really wanted,” I answer. “The problem was, the callback was on the same day we were supposed to leave for our vacation. I knew it was a mistake before I did it, but I asked him if he’d be willing to leave a little bit later than we’d planned so that I could make it to my callback.”
“And that’s what led to…?” she says.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “After I asked the question, I could see that change come over him and I tried to walk it back, tell him that I’d call back and see if I could get in on an earlier day or just skip the callback altogether so we could go on our trip, but I’d already committed the chief sin in his eyes. I questioned what he’d already decided. Those pictures,” I sigh, “those, I think he just took so he’d have something to remind me what happens when I…”
I trail off.
“When you go against him?” Ida asks.
He used to say the words to me all the time, but now that I go to repeat them, they catch in my throat.
“It’s time for a commercial break,” Ida says. “I’m here talking with Emma Roxy. When we come back, we’ll be talking to Emma more about her ordeal and what kind of things she sees in her future. Stay tuned.”
Someone offscreen calls, “We’re out!”
Ida leans toward me. “I know this is hard for you,” she says, “but we’ve got to keep things moving if you’re going to be able to say everything you want to say.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better,” I tell her, and with that tiny act of me humbling myself before her, she’s no longer trying to hide that smile.
Right now, I hate Ida and I hate the studio audience and I hate the home audience and I hate everyone who has anything to do with this show. Right now, they are all just projections of Ben, every single one of them.
I know intellectually that I’m feeling this way because I’ve kept this toxic memory inside of me long enough to hate anyone I talk to about it, but sitting here, I feel like I’m back in that relationship and every person in this room is just another aspect of him.
“We’re back in five, four, three…”
Ida pats my knee for reasons alien to my understanding, and she turns toward the camera, saying, “We’re back with Emma Roxy, talking about the relationship that almost ended her career before it began.”
I don’t know where she got that. The only time Ben ever got in the way of my career was before that trip to the lake. Most of the time, my success in the movies was his own wet dream because that would only increase the value of his thrall.
“Emma,” Ida says, “we’ve talked a little about your history with this man, but let’s fast-forward to when he comes back into contact with you. Did you know from the start that he was trying to blackmail you, or—”
“I wouldn’t say that I knew he was going to blackmail me, specifically,” I tell her. “Once I knew who I was talking to, though, I knew the conversation wasn’t going to mean anything good.”
“How much did he ask for?” Ida asks.
“While Ben’s still in pretrial, my attorney advised me not to go into specifics on that, but I can tell you that it was a substantial amount,” I tell her.
“Okay,” Ida says. “What can you tell us about that arrangement?”
The way she speaks the words makes them come across less accusatory than she actually means it.
“He informed me that he had those photographs of me, and that, if I didn’t want them to become public, I’d do what he wanted me to do,” I answer.
“And you went along with this?” Ida asks.
“I didn’t know what else to do at the time,” I tell her. “Maybe that sounds stupid, but—”
“No, sweetie,” she says in a saccharine voice that only proves my point that nobody’s going to be able to replace Oprah, “it’s not stupid at all.”
“This all happened, the blackmail, after we started working on this movie and it’s my first major feature, so I was trying to keep my name out of the tabloids if at all possible,” I tell her.
“Okay,” she says, and I’m done pretending.
“You know what?” I ask. “That’s actually not true. The truth is that I remembered what I looked like the weekend those pictures were taken—at least that I had bruises all over me. I didn’t want that to be what people saw when they came to my movies or when they met me in person. I don’t want those bruises to be what my life is all about. Maybe that’s what’s happened now, maybe not. It’s too soon to tell, but I just didn’t want people to see the bruises.”
“So it wasn’t the nudity that bothered you so much; it was the bruises?” Ida asks, and she jerks back a little when she sees the look on my face. It’s not a happy one.
“I like my privacy,” I tell her, “but the bruises are the bigger deal to me, as they were at the time.”
“What do you see when you look at those bruises?” Ida asks.
“I really haven’t looked at the pictures,” I tell her. “I glanced at them briefly a while ago to make sure that I was being blackmailed with something he actually had, but as soon as I saw what they were, I closed the file. I haven’t really looked since.”
“You couldn’t bear to look at those bruises,” Ida says.
“It’s not that,” I tell her.
She sits quietly for a second and then asks, “What is it?”
“They’re different things,” I tell her. “I didn’t want the pictures released to the public because I didn’t like the thought of everyone seeing what he’d done to me. I didn’t want to look at the pictures myself, because…”
“It’s all right,” she says, at the first sign of hesitation.
“I hate the fact that I’m smiling,” I tell her. “In every one of those pictures, I’m smiling. That’s when I really started to feel like he had me in a way that I couldn’t possibly escape. He could take pictures of my battered, naked body and still get me to smile for the camera. I didn’t like that then and I don’t like that now.”
“I was going to ask about that—a lot of people, even after you gave your press conference, thought that those pictures might have been doctored in one way or another,” she says. “Whether it was the bruises that might be fake or that you weren’t actually naked in the original and someone put in another person’s—you know how that sort of thing works,” she says. “The one thing that always chilled me to the bone, though, was that smile on your face.”
I wonder if we should be discussing why she was looking at the pictures in the first place. That just seems like a lot of schadenfreude for an ostensibly bubbly and caring member of the talk show community.
“I’ve got to be honest,” she says, “when I saw that first photograph, I thought those pictures might have been doctored, too. It was that smile. I couldn’t imagine someone going through all of that and still being able to put a smile on her face—”
“I didn’t do it out of courage,” I interrupt her. “I did it out of fear. There’s nothing inspiring about that smile; it’s a smile that I wore because I didn’t want to make him angry.”
“You did what you had to do,” Ida says. “I think that’s the best way to think about it, because who knows what could have happened if you refused? He could have beaten you or he could have drowned you in the lake—there’s no telling what—”
“I don’t like to think about that,” I interrupt her. “Even now, it still feels, sometimes, like I’m playing with someone else’s poker chips and at any moment, he’s going to come back to claim me and put me in that place again.”
“Powerful words,” Ida says, though I have no idea what she’s referencing. “We’ll be back after this break for our last segment with Emma Roxy. Stay with us,” she says.
“And we’re out!”
Ida leans toward me for a moment and says, “I noticed I touched a couple of nerves in that last segment. Don’t worry, the next one is all about the bright future you’ve got ahead of you and the wonderful ways in which you are blessed and blah, blah, blah,” she says. “There shouldn’t be anything too drastic.”
At least it’s nice to know the mask comes off.
“Yeah,” I say. “Could someone get me some water?”
Ida snaps her fingers, gets someone’s attention I can’t see, and mouthes the word “water” while pointing at me.
I see the man run off the set and I look over the crowd. Some of the audience members are looking at me or otherwise toward the stage, but the rest of them have their heads turned, talking to each other. Almost everyone in the room is smiling.
I glance back and see the man coming toward the stage, but one of the directors or someone in similar position of authority stops him.
The man’s looking back and forth between me and the man that’s holding him up, talking to him. He nods a couple of times and then just stands there as the man who stopped him calls out, “And we’re back in five, four, three…”
“We’re back with Emma Roxy,” Ida Falcone says, and it’s not until that moment the man with my bottle of water is allowed to come up to the stage and hand it to me. They wanted to make sure they got it on tape and they couldn’t do that if we weren’t “back.”
I unscrew the lid and take a sip of the water, just to ease my throat, and Ida turns back to me.
“Now, we’ve heard some of the terrible things that you’ve gone through,” she says, “but you’ve also got a lot to look forward to, don’t you?”
The way she phrases it, I don’t know how to answer.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “I suppose.”
“Well, you are dating Damian Jones, aren’t you? I’d say that’s something to look forward to,” she says, and the audience cheers.
Maybe it’s the shortened “commercial break,” but I’m having trouble seeing how they’re going to make this drastic transition work on broadcast.
“We’ve gotten to know each other a bit over these past few months,” I answer.
The rest of the conversation is just more of the boring drivel that I thought I’d end up missing after Ben sent off the pictures. I still don’t miss it.
Finally, the show’s over and Ida and I pose for some pictures on the stage—although it’s not entirely clear who’s taking the pictures and why—and she points me back toward Sweater Guy, still standing in that same spot, just offstage.
“You did great,” he says as I get close. “I thought that was a very powerful show. How did you think it went?”
“I think she’s kind of a cunt, but you seem like a decent guy,” I answer, and just keep walking as he stops.
It’s the middle of the day and I’ve still got to get back to the set and lay down a couple of scenes. We’re getting so close to wrapping up filming and I’m just wondering what I’m going to do with my time.
I’ve gotten a lot of offers since those pictures came out, more than a few from Lifetime, but nothing’s standing out to me.
Now that I’m almost done with my breakthrough film, I have an enormous decision to make: what kind of actress am I going to be?
Recent events are lending a lot of opportunities for me in the revenge genre, but I don’t want my work to be about my life. That’s kind of the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to be.
Taking everything outside of my career itself out of the picture for a moment, the first big question is whether I’m going to stick with lighter movies, comedies with big name actors and that sort of thing, or if I want to branch out straight out of the gate.
I could always do another film similar to Flashing Lights and then try something else after I’ve gotten some more notoriety (for my work as an actress), but the problem with that is that I’d have to fight being typecast.
There’s still time for me to figure it out and the offers seem to keep coming, so I’m not going to let my small death onscreen a few minutes ago be overshadowed with simpler worries like my career.
I get out to the parking lot and I’m mobbed by women from the audience, and once they recognize me, random people walking by the studio set.
Nobody’s asking for an autograph right off the bat, which is kind of surreal. Mostly, everyone just wants to tell me that they wish me well and that they’re glad I got out of such a bad situation, etc., etc., etc.
I’m working my way through the crowd and the first few headshots start to come out, their owners looking for a signature.
The crowd loves me now, but if I start refusing autographs to this many people without someone standing next to me telling everyone that I’ve got to go, this could turn ugly pretty quick, so I start signing.
With all these people handing me headshots and photos from magazines and T-shirts, I’m not worried about writing personal messages to everyone. I’m just trying to get through so I can leave.
For the most part, the people around me are respectful, but as more time passes, the people toward the back want to get closer and the people at the front don’t want to leave where they are and I start getting jostled around a little bit. I’m starting to lose my balance when someone grabs my arm and pulls me upright and toward them.
“I have a few pictures I’d love for you to sign,” the man says, and I look up, horrified. It’s Ben. He’s wearing a hat and aviator sunglasses, I assume because if he didn’t, these people around me would tear him to shreds, but it’s him.
“You can’t be here,” I tell him, trying to keep as calm a look on my face as possible.
“I’m out on bail,” he says. “I’m a free man, and I plan on staying that way. I’m going to need you to ease back with all the stories you’re telling about me,” he says. “And I want you to drop the charges against me. If you don’t,” he says, “I’ll kill you before this thing ever gets to trial.”
My head slams into Ben’s face, and I swear I can feel the cartilage in his nose popping out of place. When I lift up my head again, he’s standing there, covering his bleeding nose with both hands. I’ve broken his glasses.
Someone in the crowd shouts, “That’s him!”
Someone else yells, “Get him!”
“No!” I shout with all the force of my lungs.
The people around me stop in their places, though they’re now restraining Ben.
“We are going to call the police and he’s going to go back to jail,” I shout. “We’re going to show him that we’re better than he is.”
There seems to be general agreement among the group, though there are still a few people throwing bottles and various detritus at him.
This is just going to be one more thing in the papers and on television, and I’m sure if the internet’s not broken already, it’s got to be nearing that end, but right now, I’m not so worried about that.
Really, I’m just feeling pretty good about the throbbing pain in my forehead and the fear in Ben’s eyes as he continues to bleed while someone calls the cops. Nobody’s physically holding him back now, but nobody’s going to let him leave here, either.
Along with the restraining order I should have filed years ago, Ben will now be receiving another set of charges, and if I’m lucky, he’ll be too old and decrepit when he comes out to even consider trying to come back into my life a third time.
The police arrive with an ambulance not far behind them and they take Ben away.
We’re all standing around for a long time talking to the police, but eventually, they let us go. I tell one of the officers that I want to file a restraining order against Ben and he gives me a quick lowdown of the process involved with that.
I’m not a violent person. In fact, I deplore violence.
That said, though, nothing in my life has ever felt better than making that son of a bitch bleed.