Going Off Script Read online

  “Tengo mucha suerta,” I explained, grasping my throat for emphasis, which did nothing to clarify the situation, since I had just used the Spanish word for luck instead of thirst.

  She laughed some more, then got up, walked over to my bookcase, and started pulling my old stuffed animals off the shelves. She brought them to my bed and began piling them on top of my immobile body.

  “No, no, no, por favor!” I croaked in my parched-throat voice.

  She put the next batch over my face.

  This was starting to go south in an old black-and-white horror film kind of way, like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? where Bette Davis buries paralyzed Joan Crawford up to her neck in sand at the beach and dances around her singing a children’s song.

  By now, Terror Toddler was giggling up a storm as she scooped up whatever she could find in my room to pile on top of me—dirty socks, old issues of Vogue. I was her personal Legos base, and she was building a tower on top of me. She had figured out that I couldn’t move and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop her.

  “Cut it out, you little shit,” I snarled past a mouthful of Curly, my favorite stuffed poodle. After she added a few record albums, picture frames, and more dirty clothes from my hamper to her living sculpture, I sensed that my tormentor had left the room. Now all I had to do was get someone’s attention so they could come rescue me. “Maaaaaammmmma,” I whimpered. I tried blowing Curly off my face. Relief flooded through me when I heard the rustle of someone hurrying through the door.

  Not Mama.

  The enemy had returned.

  This time, she had bottles and cans piled in her tiny, evil arms. She had gone down the hall to raid her mother’s cleaning supplies. Now bottles of Windex and cans of Scrubbing Bubbles were added to the growing tower o’ death on top of me.

  “You’re a puta diablo, get out of here you little bitch!” I said. “Diablo. You understand that?”

  Then, just as she started to make her way to me with the dreaded bottle of Windex, blessedly, I heard my mother’s voice.

  “What’s going on here?” Mama asked.

  “Ma, you abandoned me! This little bitch was about to blind me!” I wailed, but she either couldn’t hear me beneath the mountain of debris, or, more likely, she was pretending not to so she wouldn’t have to face her own guilt over leaving an al-Qaeda sleeper cell to babysit me.

  “Are you playing?” she chirped brightly. “That’s good! You’re feeling better!”

  The rest of my two-month recovery went somewhat better. I made a half-assed attempt to do the prescribed physical therapy exercises but bitterly stopped trying when I discovered that the surgery hadn’t magically made me two inches taller and supermodel material. Mama was fetching homework from my professors and would hold my books for me or spoon-feed me lunch while I worked. Babbo never saw through my lies about my feet feeling numb, and gave me foot massages on demand. I wasn’t about to suffer nobly. I held court from my bed all day. Monica’s old high-school bestie, Niki (the one I had played airport chauffeur to when I was thirteen), lived only five minutes away and came by every day to help me with my schoolwork and watch Chris Farley and David Spade in Tommy Boy for the four hundredth time. It never failed to crack us up, and I can still recite the entire movie from memory. Not that anyone ever takes me up on the offer. Laughter and good company were definitely the best medicine for me.

  Not such good company was my boyfriend, Richard, who showed up for the first time two days after I got home.

  “Hey, how you feeling?” he asked with what I took to be faux concern.

  “Huh. Nice of you to finally come see me,” I groused.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? I was at the hospital!” he objected.

  “No, you were not.” I had no recollection of Richard ever coming to the hospital, and it was just like him to blow it off because of the blizzard and figure it would be fine to wait for me to get home. He hadn’t even called me at Johns Hopkins.

  After the water-deprivation homecoming incident, I had gotten a bell for my nightstand. Now Richard started going crazy ringing it, until Mama appeared.

  “Anna! Tell her I was at the hospital!” he begged her.

  “He never came to see me, Mama!” I argued.

  Mama wanted nothing more than for me to marry Richard, and she was willing to defend him to the death. Richard was almost like a son to her. And, like Pasquale, a son could do no wrong. She turned to admonish me.

  “How can you say this?” she scolded.

  Richard and I went round and round, until finally he said, “I’m leaving! You’re a bitch!” and pulled the pillow out from under my head in frustration. I howled in pain. Mama gave me a “drama queen” look, and Richard stalked out. I silently vowed to boil him again as soon as I got my strength back. Once I did, however, I decided to spend the energy on more urgent business: I needed to take my final exams so I could graduate.

  My surgery was a wake-up call and a life changer. If I hadn’t had the operation, I wouldn’t have my career. For starters, it corrected the way my bowing spine had pushed out my upper chest on one side and made my shoulder jut out. There is no way I could have camouflaged that deformity in the strapless designer gowns that are such a staple of my working wardrobe: you can’t wear an empire-waist dress at every awards show. More important, though, my long recovery gave me a lot of time to truly think about my future instead of childishly fantasizing and believing it would magically come true. I had done all right at University of Maryland, ending up with a solid B average, but I hadn’t done anything beyond that to make myself ready for the working world. I had been too caught up in my social life to get an internship or entry-level job at a local TV station like so many of my classmates had done, and I hadn’t done any kind of networking. I knew I needed more experience to even get a foot in the door. I started doing some research from my sickbed.

  I got a handicapped parking pass, wobbled my way to classes, and somehow made it through exam week. But managing the stadium for the graduation ceremony was a huge ordeal. The pain was overwhelming, but it wasn’t going to stop me from showing up and getting my diploma in person. Once it was in my hands, I sat back down with a big grin on my face. I had a huge secret that I had been keeping to myself:

  I wasn’t really done.

  chapter five

  Although we weren’t officially engaged, there was a general assumption on everyone’s part that Richard and I would get married after college, and I would join him in the family business once I realized that my cute little goal of becoming an anchorwoman was nothing but a pipe dream. As far as my parents were concerned, I had my college degree now, so I should be happy. I’m not so sure that my Bachelor of Arts had that much more significance to them than my Barbizon certificate. They were proud, to be sure, but in the way they were proud of whatever their children did, whether it was Monica making a name for herself in the New York fashion world, or me graduating from college, or Pasquale singing opera and building his own business. I didn’t feel a sense of completion, though. I was still a work in progress, and some polishing needed to be done before I was ready to launch myself into the world as a real journalist.

  I knew a master’s degree would make me more marketable in a competitive industry, but when I lightly tested the waters over going to graduate school, the response from Babbo and Mama was something to the effect of “You have a degree, why-a you need another one? Marry Richard!” I decided not to ask them for the money, or to even tell them that I’d already applied to American University and had been accepted. They had spent their whole lives giving and giving and giving to all three of us kids. Besides, I was twenty-one years old, and it was time for me to start becoming financially independent. So I quietly took out a student loan for the full tuition and charted my own course. I would devote the next two years to learning everything I possibly could about broadcast journalism. No more frivolous classes in sailing or bowling or, God save me, botany: this was my chance to truly immer
se myself in the subject that had grabbed me at the age of seven and never let go.

  I was still envisioning myself as a news anchor someday, reporting authoritatively from D.C. with one of those cool back-drops of the Capitol dome lit up behind me. What went on inside that dome bored me to tears, though, to be honest. Politics, policy, government—it seemed like there was too much galloping around and kicking up of dust without anyone actually getting anywhere. The Ponderosa all over again. True to form, it would take a megadose of public humiliation to clarify things for me.

  One of the things that made AU’s journalism program so attractive to me was the emphasis on practical experience, especially at the graduate level. One day, I was assigned to take a camera crew and report on a press conference being held by Senator Ted Kennedy. I was supposed to try to get the esteemed senator to answer a question during the Q and A period following his remarks. As soon as I heard those magical words, “The senator will now take a few questions,” I flew into hyper, arm-waving, choose-me-choose-me mode. I hadn’t done any real preparation. I wanted to ask a question to be noticed in the room, not because I was dying to know the answer. I was so caught up in my frantic attempt to get Kennedy’s attention that I didn’t even realize that I had it when he said, “Yes, you in the back.” All the other cameras and reporters turned to catch my question, while I stood there sputtering like an idiot trying to think of one that hadn’t already been asked and answered. “Uh, uh,” I stalled. Kennedy waited patiently and smiled politically. “Yes?” he prodded.

  “Senator Kennedy, what do you do for fun?” I blurted.

  The professional journalists in the room collectively sniggered and gave me a professional “Are you fucking kidding me?” look. Senator Kennedy’s smile twitched at the corners.

  “What do I do for fun?” he repeated, now clearly bemused by the dumb kid he had just been trying to give a break.

  “For instance,” I forged ahead, suddenly channeling Mike Wallace, “where were you last Friday night at eleven p.m.?” I could feel the collective disdain in the press corps shift to collective confusion—the real journalists and probably the senator himself had to wonder for a split second whether I was an undercover reporter for some sleazy tabloid that actually had something on Kennedy. But I had no hidden agenda. C’mon, help me out here, what the hell do you do for fun? Order in pizza and watch movies? Play cards? Do you like Jenga?

  The senator’s response, which I didn’t even hear over the prayers I was saying inside my head to please God, just please get me out of here, was something banal and charming, something along the lines of having a nice dinner, eating too much dessert, and getting to bed well before eleven. I went back to school and put my segment together. Afterwards, the dean called me into his office for a little chat.

  “I think your style may be better suited for Hollywood than D.C.,” he said.

  At first, I was mortified—not to mention deeply insulted. Compared to my previous misadventures in academia, I was a serious, nearly straight-A student at AU. Still, the more I thought about it, the more I came to believe that the dean might be on to something. I had always loved pop culture, and I had grown up with MTV. I thought of Downtown Julie Brown as sort of a badass little sister to Barbara Harrison. And while entertainment journalism didn’t really exist on television in the early 1990s the way it does today, with entire networks like E! built around it, public fascination with celebrity was at an all-time high, thanks to Princess Diana and her rocky royal marriage. Identifying my niche was exciting, but how to stake my claim in the emerging field was baffling. Traditional news reporting had an established path that aspiring TV reporters could follow to success—intern at the biggest station you could, land your first job at a local affiliate, then move to increasingly bigger markets until you could crack a network job. But there were no maps yet pointing the way from Bethesda, Maryland, to Live From the Red Carpet.

  My personal life was equally unresolved.

  Richard and I kept bumping along in our Mr. and Mrs. Smith relationship. The good times were still good, and the bad times were still epic. He still considered himself in alliance with my parents to bring Giuliana into line, and I considered myself in alliance with Satan to punish the stupid shithead for even trying. I wanted to not care, but Italians are hardwired to be passionate, so indifference was never an option. I could love Richard or hate him, but there weren’t any stations on my dial in between those two channels yet when it came to romance. Which is why I went berserk when Richard didn’t answer my calls late one night when I was holed up in an editing booth at AU working on a final project.

  All those times he had accused me (falsely) of cheating, and obviously it was all just a smokescreen so he could secretly hook up with—what? Some scheming salesgirl from Parts and Service? I didn’t even have time to flip through my Rolodex of imaginary rivals before a friend called and mentioned that she had just seen Richard with some woman at the Tel Aviv Café in downtown Bethesda. Proof! I immediately jumped into my leased Lexus and raced to the restaurant. Sure enough, Richard’s Ferrari was parked outside, and through the open windows facing the street, I could see Richard sitting at a table staring into the eyes of a gorgeous brunette. He was busted big-time, and I was going to kick his two-timing ass. And hers. I stormed up to the table. He looked up at me in surprise, but tried to play it smooth.

  “Hey, what’re you doing here?” he said. “I thought you had to study.”

  “What’re you doing here?” I countered. (Great comebacks usually come to me instantaneously, but not in this case. Bill often complains that I bring a machine gun to snowball fights.)

  “Honey, Brenda and I were just—” Richard said before I jumped in and started screaming at him and the brunette who was smiling nervously.

  “You bastard! Is this your whore?” I screamed, “Your little puttana?”

  “Honey,” Richard interrupted. “Calm down. You’re over-reacting. You two met once before. Brenda is a family friend. She’s our realtor! Why don’t you join us?” Oh shit, she did look familiar after all. But it was too late to cave in and apologize. Besides, family friend or not, this little ho looked like she wanted a piece of my man.

  “You want me to join you and your puttana whore?” I screeched. Brenda started to say something, but I cut her off.

  “You shut up!” I may have flunked Bonanza, but I had The Godfather down pat. The whole restaurant was watching now, or pretending not to while they fake-ate their baba ghanoush. At this point, I suddenly remembered meeting Brenda and having a few laughs with her and her boyfriend (Oh crap!), but I was deep into Woman Betrayed mode by then, and I had an audience, so it wasn’t like I could just sit down and order a kabob.

  “Honey, you’re embarrassing yourself,” Richard tried again.

  “Who’s going to be embarrassed now, punk?” I shot back. I went to slap him across the face, but my fist was half-closed and I missed, anyway, so I ended up slap-punching him in the ear, instead. Hard. He was clutching it in pain when I stalked outside to write FUCKING PIG in hot pink lipstick on the windshield of his Ferrari. I then started kicking his doors, all the time cursing out loud like a deranged bag lady in high heels. If there had been a horse nearby, I would have put its head in Richard’s front seat.

  Fury spent, I finally got in my car and went home just in time to answer the ringing phone. My dad picked it up at the same time.

  “Hallo?” I heard him say.

  “Eduardo, Ed, Ed, listen to me, your daughter…”

  “What-a Giuliana do, Richard?” Babbo interrupted.

  “She physically abused me! She punctured my ear drum!”

  “Your drum?”

  “Dad! He’s drunk, hang up!” I hollered upstairs.

  “She punched me in the ear and broke my eardrum!”

  “Giuliana play-a your drum and she break it?” Babbo seemed to think I had formed a thrash-metal band while working on my master’s.

  “My ear!” Richard repeated. />
  It ended as it usually did, with my parents clucking sympathetically while trying to figure out what the hell Richard was talking about before finally giving up and wishing him buonanotte. If he could call, he was still conscious, and if he was conscious, I hadn’t offed him, so no harm, no foul on the DePandi parental scorecard. We would all live to fight another day. That day came the week of my AU graduation.

  Since my epiphany courtesy of Ted Kennedy, I had concluded that Los Angeles was my only hope if I wanted to break into entertainment journalism. I had toyed with the idea of moving there but was certain my parents would never allow it, and doing it without their blessing and financial support seemed unfathomable. But the thought kept tugging at me. I had a $150 student voucher with TWA, and since the struggling airline had already gone through two bankruptcies by then, I figured I’d better use it or lose it. I booked a one-way ticket on a flight that would get me into L.A. at one in the morning on Friday the thirteenth of June, 1997.

  Once the flight was booked, I started to freak out. I couldn’t believe I was actually going to do this: I had no job, no prospects, no place to stay, and barely enough savings to cover a week’s worth of cheap sushi. Not to mention I was a fearful flier and flying on Friday the thirteenth was the dumbest idea on earth, but that was the cheapest ticket I could find so I had to suck it up and do it. Moving to L.A. for good was such a far-fetched idea, I was sure my parents would say no, and I would just end up staying in Bethesda and marrying Richard. I was so terrified, I half wished they would stop me. Then I remembered what that would look like: Richard had already suggested I start learning the family business by selling tires and rust-protection packages at one of his lots as soon as I was out of school. My graduation ceremony was on Sunday. Three days later, I dropped my bombshell.

  “I’ve got my master’s, I paid for it all on my own, and now I’m going to follow my dreams and go to L.A. and I’m leaving on Friday night,” I announced. In Italian, it sounded even more dramatic.