CHAPTER 27
1462 Words
CHAPTER 27
Kennedy would have never guessed how much work went into preparing for a television interview. She arrived at the Channel 2 building ten minutes late and was immediately whisked into a makeup chair. While two different attendants muttered and frowned and fawned over her, Diane Fiddlestein’s assistant barraged Kennedy with questions on every topic, from her time in China to her parents’ missionary work, which Kennedy had to explain was a taboo subject due to her parents’ sensitive relationship with the Chinese government. He asked her about her abduction last fall, and Kennedy’s cheeks burned when she explained to him she still had flashbacks from the event and would prefer not to discuss it on live television. He assured her he would pass the message on to Miss Fiddlestein and then interrogated her about Reuben, the nature of their relationship, what part of Kenya he was from, what kind of grades he got.
“Is she really going to ask all this during the interview?” Kennedy had lost track of the time but was pretty sure they’d been talking for over half an hour when the interview was only scheduled to last about five minutes.
The assistant explained that this was common procedure. While a hair designer slathered Kennedy with hairspray, the assistant told her where to find bottled water or tea while she waited for the interview.
Apparently, she hadn’t needed to be so preoccupied with being late, since she ended up with about forty-five minutes to wait behind the set for her turn. She was glad she had brought a book with her and found that The Trumpet of the Swan, which was on the suggested reading list for her children’s literature course, was the perfect way to calm her nerves. Carl’s warning about television anchors buzzed in the back of her head like an annoying mosquito, so she focused instead on the world of Louis, a swan who longed to share his voice with the world.
During a commercial break, while Diane Fiddlestein yelled at the teleprompter operator for some error he insisted he had no control over, her assistant led Kennedy to a beige loveseat.
“Your interview starts in two minutes. Can I get you one last drink of water?”
Kennedy shook her head, and he went on to summarize all the rules he’d already gone over before: speak clearly, ignore the camera, maintain eye contact with Diane, and stay completely on topic. Kennedy figured if she could multitask the procedure for a spectrophotometric determination experiment in the lab, she could make it through a five-minute interview.
“All right,” someone in a headset called out. “We’re up.”
Kennedy found it a little strange that this would actually be her first conversation with Diane, but she was more concerned about proving Reuben’s innocence than about how forced and contrived their meeting felt.
The man in the headphones held up his fingers and yelled out the countdown. They were on live TV.
The segment started with a few short snippets from Kennedy’s encounter with Bow Legs. She was glad they showed it off-screen so she didn’t have to watch it herself. She rubbed her clammy hands on her fitted wool slacks and tried to focus on long, controlled breathing. Five minutes. That’s all this was. Five minutes for Reuben. She could do this.
She was so focused on stuffing her anxiety into one small enclosed place in the center of her gut that she wasn’t paying attention to Diane Fiddlestein’s smiley introduction. Fortunately, after Diane thanked her for being on the show, Kennedy’s brain automatically kicked in with the expected exchange of pleasantries.
“So, Kennedy.” Diane folded her hands in her lap. Kennedy wondered if there was a metal rod surgically plastered against her spine that allowed her to sit up so tall. Diane’s smile was dazzlingly pretty, the dark red of her lips accentuating the perfect whiteness of her enamel, but there was a snakelike quality to her look that reminded Kennedy of the serpent witch in The Silver Chair. “Tell me,” Diane began, “how did you feel when you learned that Reuben had been arrested last night?”
Kennedy was glad she hadn’t asked about her encounter with the police. This was all about Reuben, after all. That’s why she was here.
“I was upset, obviously. I knew Reuben hadn’t done anything wrong, so I felt it was unfair when they took him away.”
Took him away? Maybe she’d been spending too much time reading children’s literature. It sounded like she had the vocabulary of a fourth grader.
“So tell us about the video we just watched,” Diane went on. “I’m told the camera was hidden in your pocket?”
“Right. I turned it on when it looked like there might be some sort of confrontation. If things escalated, I wanted to have it on tape.”
Diane nodded encouragingly, but her next question was far blunter than the previous. “And why did you wait a whole day to bring the truth to light?”
“I thought my camera had malfunctioned. I got a message after the incident that said it was out of memory, so I ...”
“But obviously it wasn’t if you had the recording after all.”
“I only got the first few minutes,” Kennedy explained. “The rest was ...”
Diane didn’t let her finish. “And how did you feel when you learned that your video resulted in a riot that injured a seven-month-old baby?”
“I was devastated. I never wanted anything like that to ...”
“So, you’ll be happy to learn the baby was released from Providence this afternoon?”
Kennedy felt like she was in one of Professor Adell’s lab lectures, unable to keep up with the pace. “That’s great.”
Diane jumped in as soon as Kennedy paused for breath. “And Reuben, the young man who was arrested, how would you describe him?”
The only reason Kennedy agreed to this interview in the first place was for the chance to clear Reuben’s name. She told Diane about how good of a student he was, how encouraging, how he always had kind words, how he loved his family back in Kenya.
The whole time she talked, Diane busied her fingers unfolding a piece of paper that seemed to have materialized from nowhere. She frowned. “It says here that your friend’s father was involved in the administration of former Kenyan dictator Daniel arap Moi. What can you tell me about that?”
Kennedy knew hardly anything about Kenya’s history or politics. She’d never heard the name Diane mentioned. Reuben’s conversation about his family was almost entirely limited to his numerous sisters and their dozens of children. “I really couldn’t say,” she stammered.
“I also find myself wondering why Reuben was sent overseas for his college education?” Diane’s perfect smile chilled Kennedy’s spine like the White Witch’s winter curse in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
“Well, Harvard’s a good school with a great international reputation ...”
Diane was frowning at the piece of paper, not listening to Kennedy at all. “Is it possible that Reuben was sent to the States because people with his condition get better medical treatment here than they would in a Nairobi hospital?”
Kennedy wondered if something even as warm as Aslan’s breath would be enough to melt the icicles that had attached themselves to her nerve endings. “What medical condition?”
Diane pointed at her piece of paper, even though it was too far away for Kennedy to read. “It says here that your friend was diagnosed as HIV-positive.”
Kennedy’s throat tightened. She threw a pleading look at Diane, who sat cold and frigid like Empress Jadis on her throne.
“I’m not sure that ... I don’t think ...”
“So I guess he didn’t tell you before you started dating him.” Diane frowned in false sympathy, pouting at the camera. “Well, when you see him again, please wish him the best. You’ll be happy to hear I just got word that his arraignment has been rescheduled for this afternoon. If all goes well for his case, you’ll be together again tonight. Thanks so much for joining us today, and I wish you both well.”
Kennedy was too stunned to leave her chair once they turned the cameras off. Somewhere in a different part of the studio, a weatherman cracked jokes about an early spring heat wave, but his words flowed past Kennedy like time and space zooming past Meg in A Wrinkle in Time.
Nobody, not a single one of the dozens of backstage assistants noticed her. She stood herself up, trying to find something to settle her thoughts on, a focal point to pull her out of her daze.
The next commercial break ushered in a cacophony of noise and movement, and Kennedy half expected Diane Fiddlestein to reappear and apologize for making such a heinous joke on live television, but she was already behind her desk, sharing whispers with her co-host. Kennedy was surprised her legs could hold her weight, surprised her brain could still function.
Shouldn’t the world have stopped turning? Shouldn’t her entire nervous system have shut down?
She let herself out of the backstage area and followed the exit signs until she found the elevators that took her to the main level. She walked out of the lobby and found herself alone on the Boston curbside in a world that in a single instant had lost all sense of beauty, justice, or hope.
- Writer
